INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Inside the Broncos locker room, there were yellow towels strewn across the floor and red faces in front of cameras.
A proud team in need of results to match its mouth had a chance to paint itself in brilliant colors. Instead, they painted themselves into a corner.
Three weeks into the season, the Broncos trail the Chargers by three games in the AFC West.
There’s no excusing this mess. No spinning this into anything positive. The Broncos gagged again. They ruined September and all that talk of a fast start by getting walked off for the second straight week.
We knew this game would tell us how serious to take the Broncos. And they delivered a loss that was as familiar as it was infuriating.
“It (stinks). I was right there. You have to make a play sometimes,” said cornerback Riley Moss of a fourth-quarter touchdown pass by Justin Herbert that tied the score. “I am tired of it. That’s where we need to improve and I specifically need to improve — at finishing.”
What should have been a celebration — improving to 2-1 and leading the division — turned into frustration. Sunday was a snapshot of a team defined by the worst adjective in sports: almost.
Bo Nix almost hit Marvin Mims Jr. twice for wide-open touchdowns, and Courtland Sutton for a deep ball that would have set up a clinching field goal. Nik Bonitto almost sacked Herbert on Keenan Allen’s one-handed grab against Moss. Nix almost delivered a huge fourth-quarter first down, scrambling for 11 yards when 12 were needed.
This is not a team capable of making a Super Bowl run — coach Sean Payton’s stated goal when training camp began. This team is not even capable of winning the AFC West. Not like this.
They look more like impostors than contenders.
Every time teeth gnash, palms sweat and pulses race, the Broncos capitulate. Colts coach Shane Steichen tried to gift them a win last Sunday, and they were like, “Nah, we’re good.” The Chargers fell for a 52-yard touchdown to Sutton, and spent the third quarter with their chin out begging to get knocked out, and the Broncos kept their gloves at their waist.
What a waste.
The Broncos are the NASCAR driver who hits the retaining wall on the final lap. They ask a girl to prom and don’t make the dance.
No one is blameless. It’s everyone’s fault. The lack of discipline and execution — Or is it the other way around? — is alarming.
The scoreboard read 23-20 Chargers. Here’s why the Broncos really lost: 10 penalties and nine first downs.
“We are losing the game. It’s not necessarily that the other team is beating us,” said running back J.K. Dobbins, who flirted with becoming the first Broncos running back to reach 100 yards rushing in Payton’s 38 games in Denver. “We lost two games we should have won. We will fix that.”
If it were only as easy as watching film and correcting blemishes with Adobe Photoshop. It runs deeper than this season, even if Payton does not want to acknowledge the trend. The Broncos are 2-8 in one-score games over the past two years.
“It’s very hard. We go three-and-a-half quarters playing good football and on the last drive, we can’t get a stop,” Bonitto said.
The defense was awful in the first half against the Colts. The offense was horrible in the first half against the Chargers, recording zero first downs in the first 19 minutes. Any way you look it, a team incapable of being smart and consistent deserves a 1-2 record.
They have had six chances to extend their lead to two scores in the second half the past two weeks, and whiffed every time.
So, no, the Broncos don’t get the benefit of the doubt. Not until they can meet the moment.
It has become painfully obvious. They are not ready for the bright lights, even with their next game on Monday night.
Payton, surprisingly, showed restraint in the fourth quarter and at the podium afterward. I asked him if he considered going for it on fourth-and-1 at his own 29-yard line with 5:15 remaining.
“We felt like the way we were playing field position mattered,” Payton said.
In the news conference, he spoke of learning, of cleaning up mistakes. There was no panic.
There will be those who believe the Broncos are so close to being undefeated, and that their talent will reveal itself when they are favored in four of the next five games.
“You have to be gritty, and keep fighting. We are going through it. And it (stinks), especially when it comes against a division opponent,” Moss said. “We won’t play the blame game. We have a lot of toughness. Everybody knows we could have won the last two games. That’s why it is so irritating. But we are going to get better. I promise you that.”
He is convinced. As he should be. The rest of us are not.
After last season, after all the hope, we can’t let them off easy. Not with zero idea if Nix is going to play better, if Dre Greenlaw will ever play or if Evan Engram is capable of beating out Adam Trautman.
Belief is earned.
The Broncos have had a chance to change the narrative the past two weeks, and they have responded in the clutch like a 16-year-old learning to drive a stick shift.
Everything about this start screams almost. It has left this season defined by two unforgiving words: prove it.